Chrome web apps get an extra year of support on Chromebooks

Back in January, Google announced that support for Chrome Web Apps would effectively cease in June of 2021 for Chromebooks. Today, these web apps got an extra lease on life: Google will support them until June of 2022.

This might not sound like a big deal, but I think it is. We’re not yet at the point where Progressive Web Apps are ubiquitous, for example. And while I don’t personally use a ton of Chrome Web Apps, there’s one that’s key for me: Authy, which is a fantastic two-factor authentication app.

Unfortunately, this extra year of support doesn’t help me with Authy. When Google made its January announcement to deprecate Chrome Web Apps, the Authy team pulled the plug on its web app.

To make matters worse for when using a Chromebook, here’s the recommendation from the Authy team, emphasis mine:

We strongly recommend that you immediately switch to using our desktop and mobile apps instead. These top-rated apps offer similar or better features for securely storing your authenticator account tokens, and are fully supported and regularly updated. Simply download one or more of these apps and follow the steps to transfer your existing account tokens.

Yeah, I can’t download one or more of these apps. Well, maybe the Android version I suppose but that’s really a workaround. It will have to do.

Anyway, that’s just me. I’m a bit salty about losing the Authy web app. And Chrome Extensions aren’t going away, which is good. Anyone else using a Chrome Web App or apps that is in a similar bind to me?

About the author

Kevin C. Tofel has covered technology since 2004. He's used ChromeOS since Google debuted the CR-48 in 2010, reviewing dozens of Chromebooks since then. He worked for Google's Chrome Enterprise team from 2016 to 2017, supporting the launch of Android app support. In his free time, he uses Chromebooks to learn software engineering at Launch School. In 2019, Kevin joined the CS Curriculum Committee at his local community college.